Andre Villas-Boas says Tottenham will not be spooked by previous Champions League near misses

Andre Villas-Boas has promised that his Tottenham players will not be
psychologically affected by any “ghosts” from the past in the race for
Champions League football and has predicted that what now looks like a
three-way fight with Chelsea and Arsenal will go down to the final match of
the season.

On the edge: Tottenham's manager looks on as his team can only draw against Everton, leaving Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal lying for third and fourth place in the final standingsPhoto: REUTERS

A 2-2 draw against Everton on Sunday has allowed Chelsea to leapfrog Tottenham in to third place and means that Arsenal are now also in a position to go above Villas-Boas’s team if they win their game in hand. The Portuguese will be well aware that Tottenham have a history of narrowly missing out on Champions League football, with the club finishing fifth two years ago and then only losing out last season to Arsenal on goal difference.

There were signs of nerves in Spurs’ performance but Villas-Boas is confident that there will be no mental scars from previous experiences.

“It definitely looks like it’s going to go down to the wire with these teams,” he said. “We don’t look at ghosts in the past. The reality is that Arsenal feel their belief because they finish seasons very strongly and that belief helps them.”

Additionally Villas-Boas is confident that his players have not been affected by fatigue as they also try to balance the demands of the Europa League. Spurs were held 2-2 by Basle last Thursday in their ­quarter-final first leg and must travel to Switzerland later this week for the return fixture.

“It’s nothing to do with our tiredness,” he said. “It was important for us to salvage a point because, against teams who fight for the same objectives, the only thing you cannot do is lose. It was a good performance by the team, individually and collectively, although not the result that we wanted. It means everybody is tied together for the spots.

"Arsenal’s game in hand is against Everton, so something is going to happen. Everton probably have the toughest calendar and we probably have the second-worst with matches against Manchester City and Chelsea. I think it depends on those results.”

With Gareth Bale, Aaron Lennon and Jermain Defoe all injured, it was inevitable that Tottenham should lack some of their usual cutting edge but Villas-Boas was encouraged by the performance of their replacements. “I think we’ve seen players stepping up a level: [Gylfi] Sigurdsson, [Emmanuel] Adebayor, [Lewis] Holtby, Tom Carroll and Huddlestone doing ever so well,” he said.

Bale is still expected back against Manchester City on April 21, with Tottenham’s rescheduled match against Chelsea now due to take place in May after Rafael Benítez’s team reached the Football Association Cup semi-final next Sunday. “The break allows us to focus completely on the Basle game, which is very important for the football club – it could be a blessing,” Villas-Boas added.

David Moyes, the Everton manager, suggested that his club’s chances of qualifying for the Champions League had probably been lost with their failure to preserve a 2-1 lead. They remain six points behind Tottenham but have lost further ground this weekend on both Arsenal and Chelsea.

“It wasn’t a bad performance,” Moyes said. “Does it help us? Probably not. But we’re hanging in there. I knew if we won we could get right in the mix. We’ve done everything we possibly can to try and get a result.

“We knew we probably had to win to stay in amongst it, but you probably weren’t putting us in the Champions League spots anyway. We’ll keep trying to threaten. It was a tight call, but that was it.”

Moyes felt his team, due to their shallower squad, were more affected by the loss through suspension of Marouane Fellaini and Steven Pienaar than Spurs were by the unavailability of Bale, Lennon and Defoe.

“We don’t have the squad to cope with that loss. We were psychologically affected. I think we missed our players more. We’re juggling to get a team. We don’t have big money signings sitting around the bench.

“Everton have always been a top football club and always competed. But, in the first 10 years of the Premier League, they finished in the top half once. In the last 10 years they’ve only been out of the top 10 once, maybe twice. We have to try to keep up with Tottenham and Liverpool. We have to keep up with the clubs around us and we’ve done it not bad.”